We are approaching that time of year, aren’t we? Theseasonofthefungi. (Sounds like the title of a 1950s Sci-fi ‘B’ movie, doesn’t it?

I’m beginning to see fungi all over the allotment. Nibbled at least, like this one, by some hungry critter.

Isn’t it mysterious? Mystical. It’s like an arrow. An arrow within an arrow. And arrows are an aspect of my BelowtheLine art project.

This is a cross-section of the cap of the fungus. Look at that indigo line separating the inner arrow from the ochre outer arrow. When I broke it open, the blue deepened and spread, like poison fired from a dart. What a fabulous contrast of colour: indigo and ochre.

The outer arrow is made up of rays. Golden rays. Strata. Layered time. This is an extremely sensual and sexual construction.

And you know what? It’s a vesica piscis. The space and shape created when two circles overlap. Also known as a mandorla. It is said to represent the space of the mystic. Images of Christ are sometimes represented within the mandorla, a space where heaven and earth intersect and is neither one nor the other.

I came across this video about the Vesica Piscis, entitled, curiously – TheVesicaPiscis ExplainsCreation and the Arrow ofTime, but P.S. I’m just saying it’s interesting; and for me, a bit serendipitous:

Extraordinary! There are the ochre rays, the blue interior then the white interior that is a gown but also … well, you know what. Take away the Virgin’s head (forgive me God) and there is my fungus. Equally extraordinary is that you looked at my image and knew of the other. I’ve also a ‘research’ folder on keys. Arrows as keys, triggered by Aztec ceremonial daggers. There’s a mandorla aspect to those too. There’s a quality of piercingness. On all the levels you describe. I love your definition: mundane. The problem I’m perennially facing is how to develop all this into artworks of one kind or another: technique. Thank you so much for this. 🙂

The mandorla (almond, amygdala – Joyce refers to his Magdalenian duo embodied in the vesica piscis at the heart of Finnegans Wake as ‘a pair of sycopanties with amygdaleine eyes’) is also regarded as a spindle or distaff, associated with the magical spinners of thread who spin the cosmos into existence. Funny that the motif around which the post I’ve been working on since last night is a magical spinner from Finnish mythology.

And I’d conjecture – based on the connectednesses – ‘funninesses’ we seem to be encountering – that what this magical spinner was weaving was the mathematics behind inter-relatedness and interdependence. I came to this idea from a book I have had for a long time – and God knows why I thought of this – Tides and Seasons: Modern Prayers in the Celtic Tradition, by David Adams. I’d conjecture that the Finnish spinner was spinning mandorlas. 🙂 I must now buy your book (much of which I won’t grasp) and read Finnegan’s Wake. 🙂 I also have the Carmina Gadelica. I’d recommend it.